Themes and Moral Values of Stories From the Sub-continent Published in Youtube

YouTube, a popular video site in the Internet, publishes children stories which can be used for the teaching of English. Many children stories published in YouTube are based on famous fairy tales like “Goldilock and the Tree Bears,” “The Three Little Pigs,” and “The Frog Prince.” Many other children stories, especially those from the Sub-continent, are based on the less famous tales. Examples of these stories include “The Four Friends,” “The Wise Son,” and “Whispering Palms.” Although these children stories are not well-known, with their clear English pronunciation and English subtitles they offer useful resources for the teaching of English. This paper presents the results of content analysis of a sample of 10 children stories from the latter category, that is children stories from the Sub-continent. The analysis was focussed on the themes and moral values. The results of analysis show that the children stories contain everyday life and animal life themes which are close to children life. The children stories also contain moral values which promote the importance of friendship, respect to other people, and love of natural environment. With examples of themes and moral values as such, the children stories from the Sub-continent are relevant with the mission in the development of character. Thus, when used in the English classroom, the video-based children stories from the Subcontinuent published in YouTube not only provide useful materials for the teaching of English, but they also contribute to the development of students\u27 good character

Research Studies in Second Language Writing and in Contrastive Rhetoric

The major aim of this article is to review studies of second language writing. The first part deals mainly with the process of writing in the second and first languages. The second part concerns contrastive rhetoric. In this second part, the findings of research studies on the relationship of first and second language rhetoric will be presented. Included in the discussion are research studies on contrastive rhetoric in the Indonesian context. The last section of this article concludes the discussion and proposes the implementation of more research on the relationship between Indonesian rhetoric and English rhetoric in essays written by Indonesian learners of English

Content Area Textbooks as Sources for Vocabulary Learning

This study examines the potential of content area textbooks as a lexical environment for incidental vocabulary learning. The two questions proposed are how many rarely-used words content area textbooks contain within a particular number of words, and how different or similar the frequency of rarely-used words is in the linguistic studies and non-linguistic studies textbooks. This study concludes that content area textbooks contain a relatively high frequency of words within Nat3 and Nat4 levels. The high percentage of rarely-used words indicates that content area textbooks are rich sources for vocabulary learning. The findings also suggest that different kinds of textbooks in the content courses can be rich lexical environments for the study of second language vocabular

How Australian and Indonesian Universities Treat Plagiarism: a Comparative Study

This article is a part of a larger study comparing various aspects of policies on plagiarism in two university contexts. It compares policies on plagiarism in universities in Australia and Indonesia. The results of this comparative study showed that Australian and Indonesian universities treat plagiarism differently. Australian universities treat plagiarism explicitly in their university policies. In Australian universities, plagiarism is defined clearly and forms of plagiarism are explained thoroughly, policies on plagiarism are informed to all university academic members, and there are mechanisms to manage cases related to plagiarism. In contrast, not all Indonesian universities treat plagiarism directly. Some universities depend on religious morality and academic ethics in dealing with plagiarism. Accordingly, this article recommends the explicit treatment of plagiarism in Indonesian universities

How English Intensive Course Program Affects the English Proficiency of Teachers Colleges in Indonesia

This article reports the implementation of the English Intensive Course (IC) program and examines its effectiveness in improving the English proficiency of the students of the English departments in eight teachers\u27 colleges. IC program is a onesemester course with 18 credits. The instructional materials of this program were specifically-organized and used in an integrated manner. Although some weaknesses were noted in the implementation, the IC program was likely to have a positive effect on the students\u27 English proficiency. Comparisons of pretest and posttest scores of IC students in each of the teachers\u27 colleges and in all eight teachers\u27 colleges indicated significant differences. However, because of the absence of a control group in the implementation of the IC program, the findings should be interpreted with care. Additional data concerning students\u27 responses on the IC program showed that various aspects of the program were implemented well

The Teaching of EFL Writing in the Indonesian Context: the State of the Art

Along with the establishment of the national policy which acknowledges English as the first foreign language taught in schools, writing has been part of the teaching and learning of English in various levels of education. Accordingly, many research studies on EFL writing in Indonesia have been reported and practices in the teaching of writing outlined in various types of publications. However, no publication has offered a comprehensive synthesis of the findings of those studies and teaching experiences. In response to the need for providing an overall analysis as such, this article discusses the state of the art of the teaching of EFL writing in the Indonesian context. Taking into account the historical development of teaching methodology and theoretical framework of research on writing in a wider context, this article discusses current development of EFL writing research and teaching, and elaborates the future trends of this area of investigatio